Daughter of Ashes

Hannah and husband Paul are crushed when they lose out on buying the home of their dreams. They end up with an old fixer upper that needs serious restoration. In the middle of pulling down the chimney, workmen find the body of a mummified infant. All work stops as authorities try to identify the tiny victim. Hannah has been doing research of her own on the property already and now she doubles her efforts to try to identify the child. Imagine her surprise when she’s suddenly denied access to the archives. Then she hears that the records she has been looking at are going to be destroyed. But why? There’s obviously something in those archives that some one with wealth and power wants kept quiet. Hannah only digs her heels in harder as she works to solve a 100 year old mystery.

Hannah and husband Paul have just come to the realization that they could afford their dream of a retirement home on the lake. After the deal on their first choice fell through they purchased a historical cottage on the water close to Elizabethtown, a small, prosperous city.

With the help of their realtor, Caitlyn, they purchase the cottage and begin renovations. During the process of knocking down a wall which housed the fireplace they discover the mummified body of an infant girl. Hannah soon begins to try to discover the mystery behind the death of the infant.

This is a classic whodunit with lots of characters coming into play. Since the town is fairly small the cast is limited to the townspeople and their families. Soon Hannah begins to search city deeds to property, birth records, marriage licenses, etc all in an effort to answer the mystery.

The story really begins to pick up pace when the son of their contractor, while running an errand on his motorcycle, is forced off the road causing a terrible accident which almost cost Rusty his life. After this the story continues with enough twists and turns to keep me interested. The mystery isn't solved until almost the end of the book which kept me guessing throughout.

I enjoyed Ms. Talley's writing style which flowed very well and the multitude of diverse characters.

I did feel that the novel would have been helped by more descriptions of what must be a very beautiful area. I find it always helpful to be able to place myself in the scene and get a better sense of where the story is taking place.

This is a great mystery and I think it would be a good book club book.

Hannah Ives and her husband, Paul, buy a cottage that needs some DIY attention. That DIY attention leads to a mummified body of an infant in the chimney. Hannah decides to find out the story behind this gruesome discovery. Suddenly she finds herself up against a wall. Is someone trying to keep that body hidden? Just how far back does this mystery go? I enjoyed following Hannah's search as if I was part of it. Marcia Talley has a knack for writing well pace, thrillers that keeps you, the reader, guessing and enthalled. Very very good.

I have loved Hannah Ives since her very first book and I am always pleased to get to spend more time with her and her family. Hannah is a smart, feisty woman with a loving relationship with her husband, daughter, sisters and grandchildren. Hannah and Paul decide to buy a house on the shore as a family gathering place. After losing out on their first choice, Hannah immediately falls in love with an English cottage. They decide to do some remodeling on the cottage and find that the bones of a child were buried within the walls. Mystery seems to follow Hannah around but she is always quick to put her sleuthing skills to work and get to the bottom of the situation. I love spending time with Hannah and hope to be able to do so again.

Outstanding entry in a long-running series. Hannah and her husband move to the shore of the Cheasapeake Bay.

Daughter of Ashes: A Hannah Ives murder mystery by Marcia Talley Hannah and her husband have bought a new home. It's by the water and it looks like an English cottage. It's cute and Hannah loves it even if it needs some work done. No one expected a dead baby to be hidden in the fireplace...

Severn House and Net Galley allowed me to read this book for review (thank you). It will be published September 1st, so keep an eye out for it.

Hannah can't leave a mystery alone and when the sheriff tells her there's no way to identify the baby since it appears the birth was in 1950 or so and the baby died naturally, she can't leave it alone. She wants to know more about the house and the people who had lived there.

She's also working on a project at the courthouse. They found an old locked room in the basement that had many old records it it. They are moldy and falling apart but many are still salvageable. She agrees to work with the new county clerk and her old boss to rehab what they can. She also hopes to find more info about the house and its occupants.

The more Hannah discovers, the more questions arise. One young woman committed suicide at the home by drowning in the lake. There's an old cemetery there that someone is caring for. Eventually she learns it was the slave's cemetery. That's just one of the secrets of this community.

The troubles go back three generations. Murder is a side event that will protect the monied. And somehow Hannah has ended up in the middle of it.

Hannah is not a boring character. She fights for what's right, stands up to those who are more privileged than she is, and doesn't back down. I admire her. Hannah resolves this case and puts a lot of old wrongs right. What more could you ask for?

We all have secrets. We all have things in our family histories that we would rather not acknowledge. It is only the wealthy and powerful – those with more to lose – who will take drastic and desperate measures to ensure those things never come under public scrutiny.

Our protagonist is a middle-aged woman named Hannah Ives. Hannah wears many hats. She is a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a cancer survivor, and a records manager/archivist. Her beloved husband Paul, is a professor at the Annapolis, Maryland naval academy. Hannah and Paul have reached the point in their lives where they are contemplating retirement and want to purchase a retirement cottage near the water. After a real estate deal gone sour, they finally purchase a charming English cottage on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, Maryland.

Their ‘new’ cottage is an ancient dwelling built in the 1770s. Needless to say it requires extensive renovation. It is during this reno that the corpse of a tiny baby is found inside the chimney. It is this grisly discovery that sets Hannah on a quest to discover her identity. The repercussions of this quest lead to a murder and an attempted murder.

While settling into the small town where her cottage is located Hannah runs into Fran, a former boss. Now retired, Fran is interested in some long forgotten records recently discovered in the moldy basement of the town hall. She enlists Hannah’s aid and expertise in cleaning, sorting and evaluating the documents. They find property records, birth, death and marriage certificates etc. The women are blissfully unaware that there are those who would rather these records remain unread.

During the reading of this novel I learned some sordid facts about recent American history. How rampant racism was in Maryland as recent as the 1950s and 60s. For instance did you realize that it wasn’t until 1967 that mixed-race marriages were legal in all states?

“Daughter of ashes” is the fourteenth novel in the Hannah Ives series of mysteries and it is the first novel by Marcia Talley that I have read. Although the book alluded to past adventures, the fact that I had not read the previous thirteen novels in the series did not in any way mar my enjoyment of this one.

I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys contemporary, cozy style mysteries. A picturesque setting, an intelligent amateur sleuth and a well researched plot add to the enjoyment.

Thanks to Severn House via NetGalley for providing me with a digital review of the novel for reading and review.